Why are environmentalists against the co2 scrubber?

Question

it's this new technology which can remove 1 ton of carbon from the atmosphere a day. I don't know about you, but this is a bit shady for me. is it revealing the environmentalist's real agenda? (power) Give me your thoughts.

And star me please

Answer 1

Nothing wrong with it--except it isn't practical on a largescale.   Stop and think--the US puts over 20 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each day. Now--that means you'd need aout 20 million of these scrubbers. Go check out how much each would cost to operate each year.  then add up the total.

Then go look at our total gross national product.  We don't have that much money, genius.

Answer 2

CO2 scrubbing is not a new technology, it is very well documented, and used on a daily basis in the operating suites throughout the world, or at least in the USA...enviro/greenie/commies/socialists are not concerned about the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, they are concerned about stopping human progression...many are Luddites, they are pantheists, and they want to tax this countries corporations, and by doing that, tax the rest of us, to do away with the free enterprise system in this country....go to Maxine Waters comments concerning the oil companies, although she later lied to cover up what she said, it was clear to everyone that she said what she meant to say-the government needs to own the oil companies...and everything else...good question, fun answers

Answer 3

This is not a new technology at all.  There's a company called Fuel-Tech that's been in this business for years.  Not only does it remove CO2 from the exhaust of coal fired power plants, but it also cuts down dramatically on NOx and SO3 emissions.  

I consider myself an environmentalist, and I'm all for the application of this technology to all existing coal fired power plants.  Even if we really pushed to make all of our electricity renewable, we'd still need electricity produced from coal in the interm, so why not make it the cleanest coal as possible?

Answer 4

Sequestering of Co2 underground or in any other non-recycling fashion removes oxygen that we breathe from the atmosphere. Every three pounds of Co2 sequestered is one pound of carbon and two of oxygen, we need that oxygen to breathe, if you sequester it we will eventually run out of it and people will die from a lack of it.

THINK!!

I have discussed the subject of Co2 with several local companies that bottle gas for industrial use and when you mention extracting Co2 from the atmosphere to bury it the laugh a lot. Why, the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere is not sufficient to be able to extract it except at very high cost. So I asked where does the Co2 gas come from that you sell for use in carbonated (coke) drink dispensers and dry ice. Answer they get it from stack scrubbers at oil refineries, power plants and other manufacturing sources that produce Co2 as a part of their operation cycle. How long has this been going on I then asked, their answer was at least a hundred years since it became practical to do so.

So once again we find the truth is different than the AGW promoters would have us believe, industry in general is not at fault for AGW and Co2 is such a rare gas in the atmosphere that it is not economically feasible to extract it for industrial or commercial uses. So where does so much of the Co2 come from, carbonated soft drinks (those pretty bubbles), dry ice and people and animals breathing. Easiest and cheapest way to reduce Co2 in the atmosphere is to plant a couple of trees they extract the one carbon atom and release the two oxygen atoms into the air for us to breath. When you bury Co2 as the AGW people want us to do, for every single carbon atom you put in the ground you also put down there two oxygen atoms, so eventually if the AGW people have their way we will certainly run out of oxygen atoms for us to breath and live off of.

As you can easily see those who promote the AGW political agenda are first not very bright and second they are not at all scientific.

Answer 5

because we don't believe it.

we think it's likely a waste of your money.

fancy that, environmentalists trying to save you money.

it could be that we're wrong.

but it'll take a bit more convincing.

Answer 6

Bellow is my answer to the same question 3 days ago.

The gist of it is that a CO2 scrubber (to chemical engineers, gas absorption column) will likely use (mono)ethanolamine, a toxic substance. Because of how the air contacts the MEA, there will be some present in the tops (gas effluent). Now for small CO2 operations (like making dry ice) this may be OK, but on the order of removing 1ton/day will expel too much MEA to the surrounding area. The other major way to get the CO2 out is with Calcium Carbonate, but I don't think that would scale too well.

If someone can provide a link with technical info on this 1ton/day scrubber I keep hearing about, that would be appreciated.

    * 3 days ago

Well, there's not any technical information in the article, so i'll have to guess.

This CO2 absorption column most likely uses an aqueous solution of ethanolamine, which increases the solubility of CO2 in the solution. The gas is passed into the bottom of the column, and the liquid feed into the top. On they way down, CO2 is dissolved into the solution. The top effluent (air with less CO2) is expelled, and the bottom effluent (water, ethanolamine, and dissolved CO2) goes through some kind of mechanical separation (perhaps heating or cooling or compression) to release the CO2 gas from the liquid. The gas released will be mostly CO2 (for vapor-pressure equilibrium separation roughly .0005%wt to .001%wt ethanolamine based on my quick calculations). But there will also have to be a purge stream, which I cannot estimate here, and will probably release a lot more MEA into the environment (unless the scrubber is about the size of a city block).

MEA is extremely toxic and bad for the environment.

For small-scale and industrial applications, it's OK, but I would not recommend its extremely large scale use to scrub CO2 from the entire atmosphere.

    * 3 days ago

Answer 7

James, you're an idiot. do you know how much oxygen is in our earth and atmosphere? it's the most abundant element on earth, about 45% by weight.

Are you going to go around and try to stop metals from oxidizing because that's robbing us of oxygen? you can probably suck on rocks to get the oxygen out of aluminum oxide.

Answer 8

forget that 1 ton a day stuff. research the Norwegian sleipner project.

they've been putting ONE MILLION TONS A YEAR of co2 into sandstone formations 2600 ft beneath the north sea FOR 12 YEARS now since 1996 with no problems yet.

there are also at least 3 other similar projects under construction. one of them in Canada.

your correct the green n**i's don't want you to know theres an easy industrial solution.  or any other solution for that matter that's why they oppose everything that's proposed from hydro electric, to nuclear.

they are just being used as political tools,(alarm & organize the masses) though most of them don't realize it & sincerely believe they are protecting the planet from the human race.

Answer 9

they do have more economical scrubbers now.  u go TD right on!

Answer 10

because environmentalist want to take everything away!   Make sure you remember that at voting time.

Absolute Power and it's disgusting

Answer 11

Because the whole environmentalist movement has never been about cleaning up the environment.  It's about control of others.

How exacly is the environmental movement saving us money?  They are taxing the living **** out of us!!

Linlyons:  Because you don't believe it?  It's been tested and proven!  Many of us don't believe humans can affect the global atmosphere.

Bestonne:  It's envisioned it will be installed in homes so EVERY HOME would remove a ton a day.  That's a lot of tons

Answer 12

This one has come several times in the last week

It is just an idea , that has been around for at least 5 years

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...

And nothing has been done to build even a working prototype and the quoted output of the 'idea' was 90 tons a year which seems to have been upgraded to 1 ton a day

It uses large quantities of lye as part of the process to bind the co2 not to mention the energy required to run the system.

Deniers are using this as a reason to beat environmentalist's yet again like this 'from you know who' to claim hidden motives.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?art...

Lye (sodium hydroxide (NaOH)) how dangerous is it, it is being considered as an alternative to cremation, it is that good at destroying organic tissue.

Answer 13

I'm not against it. However like most AGW proponents and unlike many AGW doubters, I advocate a multi-pronged approach to solutions as there is no one, simple way to resolve the issue.

The CO2 scrubber is a good idea. There are, however, still some significant challenges to be overcome before it can be considered a useful tool in the fight against AGW:

1) This is only useful for new CO2 being produced, not CO2 that has already been released

2) It is only useful in large burning of carbon (e.g. power plants)

3) It is a new technology and may take decades to come on line in any significant quantity

4) It does nothing to encourage a cut in CO2 production in the first place (the real solution!)

5) It is horrendously expensive and, before a lot of money is poured in (keep up R&D spending but hesitate begfore spending more), it may be best to see if a more effective use of the money would be recycling or tidal power or education, etc.

6) Once you've scrubbed the carbon, then what? It still needs to be stored somewhere and this is an issue that is very much in its infancy - it might be like nuclear power - good in the short term but simply creating bigger problems for the future.

Answer 14

Which ton is that?

But anyway, a single 'ton' whatever that is per day isn't going to solve the problem, it'd have to be scaled up much larger than that to be worth looking into.

Oh and what other environmental effects would it have?